Category: Carlyn Yandle

The future is fungal

1/18/2025

Mushrooms and more for troubled times

When you spend a good portion of your winter cowering from the cold and the rain, it’s hard to fathom the fiery desert winds that are obliterating entire neighbourhoods just a three-hour flight south. In the near-real-time images and video only chimneys, mangled metal and concrete driveways hint at what used to be.

But then you notice the vestiges of palm trees, bougainvillea vines, laurel hedges, tufts of sisal and succulents. Before the last tendrils of smoke dissipate and the insurance battles begin, these plants hold the promise that buds and leaves will sprout and new colonizer species will emerge, boosted by an ashy soil. They are a reminder that whether it’s our perilous planet or our own contorting guts, flora heals.

This front line in ground recovery is below the surface, a mycelium network of fungal lace that can erupt in reproductive spores, most noticeably after wildfire as a bright orange carpet of tiny caplets.

Mapping entanglements: Crocheted cotton, acrylic on panel, 12”x12” (Carlyn Yandle)

Mycelium is all the rage these days, embraced for its regenerative properties. I may be a little disturbed by the tiny fungal ecosystem flourishing in a dark corner of my damp art studio, and mushrooms on my tongue may feel like phlegm balls, but I get excited at the news that mycelium is being explored to fight cancer cells and alleviate physical and psychological trauma.

The earth-sustaining potential of mycelium is unlimited: just one bus-ride away from my studio, at UBC’s Biogenic Architecture Lab, bricks and other building materials are being made from edible fungi like oyster-mushroom mycelium; the late actor Luke Perry’s final wish was to be wrapped up in mycelium embedded in a Mushroom Death Suit for his green burial. (And he was.)

Mapping entanglements II: acrylic on panel, 12”x12” (Carlyn Yandle)

Mycelium spores, unlike seeds, are resilient to toxic compounds, high temperatures, drought and radiation — food for thought as footage of those Los Angeles homes, typically composed of and containing a wide array of synthetic polymers, go up in poisonous, cancer-causing smoke.

Spore: Acrylic and mercerized cotton thread on found linen, 12”x 9” (Carlyn Yandle)

I see mycelium as a pattern for social regeneration after natural and unnatural disaster and scorched-earth policies. Its spreading network of tendrils mirrors our innate need to connect with one another, finding and nurturing our common ground despite divisive forces. Those thickening entanglements bring comfort and joy because we are pack animals. It is in our human nature to come together; we can see it right there in the aftermath of LA fires.

We may be on shaky ground but I can feel the rumblings as we emerge/erupt/bloom, mycelium-like, when the conditions call for fresh energy. Bloop! Bloop!

Time to find focus

1/4/2025

Depicting a distracted mind might not be helping

Disrupting the grid, upending predictable patterns. Acrylic on canvas, sewing pins, 24” x 24” (Carlyn Yandle)

If the person I share the bed with is to be believed, this morning (as of this writing) I announced in my sleep: “I’m sorry we’re going to martial law again.”

I have only a dim notion of what martial law entails. I’m also not sure if this ‘sorry’ is in the Canadian sense, as in “Sorry bus full” on the rush-hour B-Line that really means “Suck it up, buttercup.” Or is it regret that martial law is again here? In any event, I’m impressed that my id (if you’re a Freud follower) even has a notion of the word ‘sorry.’

I assumed this bit of sleep babble was a call to end this seasonal distraction or maybe our collective distractive state in general. I admit I am worried about my own eroding focus exacerbated by the commercially- and politically-corrupted internet. And I’m not alone; half of US adults are getting their newsbits on TikTok, part of the bombardment of unrelated snippets of (mis)information from maybe humans but increasingly AI.

Thoughts of doom-scrolling, pop-up ad windows, investment-building booms, Amazon fulfilment centres and faceless Cloud storage mega-facilities. Acrylic on canvas, 34” x 27” (Carlyn Yandle)

Over the years I have developed a near-obsessive way of working to evoke a seductive, unsettling visual field, somewhere between pretty and pretty distracting. This laborious process immerses the body in the subject while opening up time and space for the mind to consider some questions like: Are American reporters putting themselves in danger by exposing white supremacy groups? Is it safe to be trans in a small US town? Will women run the risk of more hate and harassment as the top trending phrases, “Your body, my choice” and “Get back to the kitchen” spread online? Is Canada the next alt-right nation? I’m concerned that as long as we’re preoccupied by our next Amazon orders to be fulfilled, or wasting hours killing foes in Call of Duty or dreaming of a career as an influencer, we’re not seeing some harsh political realities coming soon to a White House near you.

I wish I could be content to paint pastoral scenes or voluptuous florals that people would actually want hanging on their walls but this is where I’m at. I lose myself in this work of painting acrylic skins, slicing them into razor-sharp edges and right angles, then positioning them, layer after layer with tweezers and brayers, building and negating grids until my eyes start to cross and my back seizes up. And as the old song goes, I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

I’m starting to think that my martial-law proclamation is directed at my own obsessiveness and toward good orderly direction. We’re all going to need that kind of focus in 2025.

From mind-numbing to mindful

9/30/2024

Dropping out is easy. This art practice is about tuning in

Flat on my back in the chair last week, the dentist had just plunged the second needle into my eroded molar area and her assistant was now affixing the rubber dam. This is when my go-to flight response kicked in: I'm not really here! I'm not really here! I'm not really here!

Full disassociation is appropriate when two dental professionals are bearing down on you with drill and suction tube and you are required to relax your gag reflex. But checking out of reality to avoid the pain of the Divided States of America’s Presidential election campaign is not the answer.

In this Disinformation Industrial Complex age it’s tempting to drop out and go on a bed-date with the vape pen to binge Love Is Blind. But we need to stay engaged — yes, even Canadians. We need to tune in to reliable sources of news,* turn on our own brains and hearts so we can discern the rational from the irrational and the hopeful from the hateful. And when the time comes (in any public election), we need to turn to voting our own conscience and not what others expect from us.

The trick is to do it all without risking mental instability, starting with the premise that we are not all going to Hell in a handcart. We need to believe in ourselves as part of the greater good. Adding to ‘believing’ is the need for time away from the too-many screens. True, a growing number of US adults (58 per cent) say they prefer to get their news on their digital devices but we can choose which news sources and the conditions for absorbing it.
This is how I approach any artwork: through belief and time. I believe that a large-scale or complex project can and will emerge through small, individual actions. I give myself the gift of time to focus on one stitch, one paint layer, one quilt-block, one knot, one row. Or, for the purpose of this weekly writing, one sentence at a time.
The following meandering, improvisational stitching-painting hybrid (linen on wood stretcher) was started this past spring, growing in complexity over the summer:

Cotton floss, monoprint on paper, 10” x 14”I’m not sure if what I’m making these days reflects what I’m listening to, or if I’ve devised this improvisational way of working to allow my brain to fully concentrate on the information. I do know that this voyage of discovery is a symbiotic relationship, a positive-feedback loop that drives me to continue developing this emerging work in the studio while reaching a deeper understanding of the world beyond.
In another example, this recent exploration into redwork embroidery could have been influenced by tuning into news features on Vancouver’s global investment-induced construction boom, housing shortage, “renovictions” and homelessness.

Cotton floss, monoprint on paper, 10” x 14”

At the time of this publishing there are 42 days of increasingly outrageous tactics before a new US president is elected. However we get there, a resting heart rate is required to see fear-mongering for what it is: just a desperate power grab.
***
*For those looking online in Canada for news that means looking elsewhere besides Facebook and Instagram, since parent company Meta chose to block their users from quality and local news instead of paying those news sources. (Google is exempt from the Online News Act after it agreed to pay Canadian news publishers $100 million a year.)

End of an era for Vancouver makers

9/7/2024

The one great store that fuels textile dreams is closing due to small-business struggles

Judging by the early deluge of reactions on Reddit last week, we Vancouver makers are stunned to learn that our mecca for material and more is selling off its inventory and properties and closing for good. And I’m dealing with it like the full-grown woman I am.

Damn you! Damn you all to Hell!

Vancouver has never had the big shmata (cloth trade) districts like Montreal or Toronto. In these parts, we have Dressew Supply, a sort of rough-around-the-edges department store almost bursting with bolts of liquidation fabrics, sparkly applique patches, headbanger wigs, thousands of buttons, zippers, feather boas, skeins of yarn, rolls of ribbon and every sewing notion imaginable to satisfy the city’s crafty counter-culture vibe.

Vancouver never had the garment district of Toronto, where “Uniform Measure/Stack" (1997), designed by Stephen Cruise (stephencruise.ca), monumentalizes objects of the trade, originally with painted path of yellow measuring tape.

I am with my people here: the grandmothers who sew Christmas-gift pajamas, the goths, the quilters, the film and theatre set designers, the dance-gymnastics girls, the fashion-school students, and more recently, Pride paraders, Halloween costumers and cosplayers. Moving through those jammed aisles of colour and pattern revitalizes the brain, especially in our soggy, dark mid-winters.

I have a long history of ruining homemade garments made from my purchases at Dressew. I blame this on the tedious, mandatory Grade 8 girls’ sewing class designed to turn us into skilled workers or housewives. So when my community-college-student budget demanded I make my own nightclubbing “look” and wedding-guest frocks, I took an improv approach, using the cheapest $2/yard “100% unknown fibers” fabrics that smelled as flammable as they looked. I was lured by the big books of “Make it tonight!” Butterick, Style and Simplicity patterns and when this timeline proved unlikely, I’d game the instructions by swapping, say, a long back zipper with self-adhesive Velcro, or cramming in some thick shoulder pads to try to give shape to my latest sagging acetate atrocity. I don’t have photographic evidence of the voluminous emerald taffeta dress with the watermelon-sized sleeves that I wore to a cousin’s wedding but I can see in the snapshot of the baby-blue Cinderella-style dress at another wedding that I didn’t see ‘fit’ as an area of concern.

Nevertheless I persisted! I dreamed big, undeterred by minimal skill and patience or my wonky sewing machine that I dropped on the floor more than once. These projects were doomed to fail, like the grey pin-striped double-breasted suit for my university boyfriend who actually wore the blazer for a while but who was also likely relieved that the trousers never materialized. And I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to all those unwilling children in my life who endured the double humiliation of being gifted one of my hand-sewn polar-fleece hats and posing for a photo in it for their mother’s thank-you note.

Evidence of ill-fitting, over-padded and plain cruel past projects.

The magic of that store is in the endless possibilities and I always left with hope in my heart that this time I will read the directions. I will take breaks. I will use pins. I will find scissors that don’t chew the fabric. I will not view interfacing as optional.
I eventually redeemed myself as the family-and-friends’ Halloween costume-maker, taking the bus downtown with one kid or another while conferring over their concept drawing that I assigned to weed out the uncommitted. They also had to help cut, sew, glue and paint as required, so I wouldn’t take all the blame for shoddy workmanship.

Learning to sew is more fun when it’s a costume.

I also got pretty good at reupholstering because I had the good sense to take some continuing-ed classes on the subject as a young adult (rather than a self-conscious, hormonal 13-year-old) led by a retired skilled professional. Still on a tight budget, I learned to revamp found vintage armchairs with Dressew’s bargain upholstery fabrics but moved over to making crib quilts for all the new babies. Eventually I got serious about fibre art and went to art school. When the pandemic lockdown hit I re-focused my plans for my stash of quilting cotton and sewed up three-layer cotton masks — so many masks — to fill the early gap in the supply chain. Elastic was a scarce commodity and that’s where the owner at Dressew stepped up, delivering yardage of elastic to me from the shuttered store’s back alley door, like a dealer doing a drop.

So many Covid masks, made possible during lockdown by Dressew.

The imminent demise leaves me — us — in the lurch. Shopping by the hand-feel (and smell) of fabrics, yarn, fun fur, trims, felt, wigs, and all the strange liquidation items is an in-person experience in the energizing milieu of other creatives. So now what? Will next year’s Halloween costume missions now take place around the ol’ iPhone peering at fabric images on Amazon, not really knowing what will show up as we hit ‘Add to cart’?
That’s a hard no. Sorry kids.

Awkward family moment informs art-making aesthetic

7/14/2024

When I first started out as a suburban-newspaper reporter I had a single original artwork tacked to the wall in my basement suite. It was a life-sized acrylic-on-paper, a nude holding her maybe-pregnant belly against a landscape of spewing factories and techni-coloured streams.

I watched this gaunt, world-weary figure emerge in watery brushstrokes from the hand of the newspaper photographer's girlfriend. This is how she worked, in their basement suite, pulling yardage from a large roll of cheap paper, painting straight from her head and heart, with no plan to keep or show or sell her paintings. She saw that this one resonated with me too — what twenty-something in a committed relationship doesn’t have this weighing on her mind? So she gave it to me.

Hanging it felt like supporting an ally, even if it was only hanging in my dark, featureless space that nobody would see besides the boyfriend on weekends. Then one day some of his family made the trip for a visit. They complimented my hanging flower baskets, my thrifty decor. I didn’t hear until much later that the painting had become a topic of conversation among various relatives, a bit of a joke about that subject and, by extension in my mind, this girlfriend.

I had none of the inner fortitude to see this painting or my choices as acceptable and eventually I rolled it up and hid it in a closet. I married into that family within three years. The boxed wedding dress joined the poster tube containing the offending painting for two more moves until I finally ditched the artwork at the Sally Ann. The dress is another story.

Detail from 'Unbridled,' the artist's handmade silk wedding dress embroidered with significant events. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

'I Dissent,' aesthetic design with a political position marking the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Acrylic on panel, 2020 (Carlyn Yandle)

But I did keep something from that painting: some lessons that have informed an aesthetic that I carry to this day but might not even recognize until after each artwork is completed, or is at least on its trajectory.

The first is the power of attraction. Not to be confused with the pseudoscientific Law of Attraction, this is a drive to create aesthetically-pleasing, familiar domestic objects and fields that upon closer inspection have something else to say besides cozy or pretty. An early example of one of my pretty/pretty disturbing objects is Clutch (2007). Hundreds of sewing pins were pierced into a thrifted clutch purse in a colourful beaded pattern covering the entire surface. The clasp opens to reveal an impenetrable thicket of steely pointy ends.

Another valuable lesson is context, or time and place. Gallery-goers may prepare themselves to be confronted by artwork but I don’t wish that on houseguests. There are none of those Live-Love-Laugh type directives or IKEA Eiffel Towers and tulips on the walls at home, but what is there is selected to engage, not repel. Home is a place to feel safe. The studio is a place to not play it safe, but it’s still a covert operation, playing on that first impression of domestic objects that reveal cracks in the beauty of the everyday.

I’ve also learned that my creative energy comes from joy, not pain. I have no urge to make when I barely have enough hope for the day to put on pants. Heavy realities may be the driving force but the work develops from a position of hope for comfort and social connection, a hunger for nourishment of new ideas and new materials to explore. The joy is in learning while doing, imagining new collective futures.

What first appears as a frilly white textile barely conceals the chaotic armature of conduit casing, hazard tape, metal pipes, and other construction-site debris behind layers of discarded Tyvek building wrap. (Nate Yandle photos)

Finally, my position is not fixed. In my mind I have that 1985 photo portrait of Lily Tomlin in a black T-shirt with white lettering that screams EVOLVE OR DIE. And look at her now. My sensibilities are always shifting and I am growing more at peace with the idea that what other people say about me is none of my business. When an artist friend turned 50 on an artists’ retreat the rest of us toasted her in a welcome to the I Don’t Give a Shit Club. When you’re part of that club you stop second-guessing every decision and tending to other people’s feelings first.

This is how I recently became the owner of Fuckwit. I was attracted by the sweet rosebud fabric appliqued in tiny blanket stitches precise as Letraset on a lacy linen. I like the artist's choice of font and word. It’s an overt, uncomplicated work that hangs near the front door, visible before guests would even have their coat off. If people get offended, blame the artist, not me. I just like the beauty in that crack.

Original artwork by Kathryn Lissack (@kathrynlissack)

Needling at patriotism and protest

7/7/2024

The American penchant for patriotic treats is impressive, from jelly shots to meat trays. (Instagram collage)

We all sort of forgot about celebrating Canada Day last weekend, up north, on a farm. No fireworks, no flags, no impressive array of themed party foods in the American way. That doesn't make us UnCanadian, a term that doesn't have any of the gravitas of UnAmerican. We may stand down from celebrations while remaining upstanding.

I feel a complicated gratitude about my Canadian citizenship, what with my settler-ancestors basically occupying traditional Indigenous territories. An inordinate number of maple leaf flags on a vehicle or house feels a bit aggressive and any big show of patriotism makes me itchy.

I started school in the U.S. All I remember about Kindergarten was learning to pledge allegiance to the flag while facing said flag, hand on heart, and also learning America the Beautiful and The Star-Spangled Banner. Then going home. I'm sure there were crafts but I'm thinking they were about all that too. Our rented house had American-eagle emblem wallpaper in the dining room and a flag mount at the front door. To Canadians, that's a lot of patriotism.

Instead of wringing my hands I start needling at local and global issues.

Starting back in my East Vancouver elementary school, I was far more interested in singing “God save our gracious Queen” to that portrait of the bosomy, bejewelled young Elizabeth that hung in every classroom and in the auditorium. There was O Canada too, and the Lord’s Prayer for a while. These days it's just the anthem and mostly for sporty public events but ask anyone around here and it’s a good bet they will not know the updated lyrics. (As if we need a daily reminder of the anthem, the first four notes of O Canada are blasted from a horn heard all over the city centre every day at noon.)

But what’s going on down south of this border has got my rapt attention and I’m not the only one. "Two-thirds of Canadians think the American democracy will not be able to survive another four years of Trump at the helm,” according to a January 2024 poll by the non-profit Angus Reid Institute. Further, “a Trump victory has many predicting dire consequences for both sides of the 49th parallel” with half of Canadians polled reporting they worry that the U.S. “could be on the way to becoming an authoritarian state."

I am compelled to work out these big-picture worries in a joyful kind of making. These days the source of the most relentless anxieties is the fear-mongering that stokes disinformation, anti-immigration, genderism — all the human-rights-violating -tions and -isms. Currently I'm needling at it, layering up those worries through trending heavy hashtags in a weighted blanket, part of an ongoing series of Discomforters.

But it's not all solo projects. In 2019 I joined a needling army of joyful resistors to the Trump presidency, in the Tiny Pricks Project (@tinypricksproject), curated and created by a maker in my corner of the world, Diana Weymar. Her invitation via social media to contribute to the public-engagement project resulted in a tsunami of more than 5,000 stitched sentiments. Galleries on both sides of the border were filled with Trump's angry tweets and comments rendered impotent in stitches and embellishments.

From left: A Trump quote surrounding Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for the @tinypricksproject, 2019. (Carlyn Yandle); detail of a gallery installation.

Being a part of that and other public craftivist projects started, for me, while living in central Mexico in the weeks leading up to the largest one-day march in American history on Washington. A grassroots social-media campaign had people all over the world taking up needles and hooks and stitching up pink pussy-hats, in comedic reference to the rape-y comments of the President-to-be. The pink sea of 2.6 million marchers on the day after Trump’s inauguration in 2017 remains an iconic image. It is yet to be seen which hat will be more enduring: the for-profit, mass-manufactured MAGA hat that his son-in-law claimed raised $80,000 a day during the 2016 campaign? Or the hand-stitched pussy-hats made singularly or in groups, and worn or gifted to marchers around the world?

That depends on who writes the history, and who owns the media.

Faith is key when you're cutting up family heirlooms

6/7/2024

Is it easy to cut up hand-embroidered linen tablecloths, runners, pillowcases?

It is not. As an adequate hand-stitcher I understand the skill, labour, time and patience that goes into each linen. I understand the desire to cherish these vintage domestic-craft objects made for the joy of it that are eventually passed around and down the generations only to be hidden in some drawer or closet. I understand the impulse to rescue them from the humiliation of their thrift-store price tags of maybe five dollars.

Cutting through all these layers of meaning feels a little like slicing into someone else’s skin. What right do I have?

Am I ruining family heirlooms? Or daylighting unused linens that have been in the dark for decades? (Carlyn Yandle photo)

As word got out that I was amassing old embroidered linens for an artwork I gratefully received donations from friends and family. It’s a lot easier to be the rescuer of those tragic cases dotted with stains or holes. At least I can console myself that I’m ending the quandary over whether to keep this piece of Grandma or let it go.

But the weighty, pristine Irish linen tablecloths that bloom with finely stitched bouquets and drawn threadwork borders are quite another thing. I take a deep breath and make mental apologies and thanks to the unknown or long-gone maker. I remind myself that I’m not ruining a family heirloom but daylighting the work of handmade things that have been in the dark for decades. Then I let the rotary-cutter rip. I am Edward Scissorhands. I can’t help myself. Sorry, not sorry.

This is the struggle behind Forage, an under-construction field of improvisational log-cabin blocks in my preferred scale of queen-sized. Each embroidered scrap is a literal snippet of a larger piece, the analogue equivalent of a digital thumbnail image. Machine-stitched together the blocks are as cacophonous as an Instagram Explore field.

That effect grows exponentially as the blocks are stitched into rows, then rows onto rows. I’m now part-way through constructing the thing as a single field (“top”, in quilt language). Viewed horizontally it is a chaotic community garden of 42 unwieldy plots that spill out into the paths (“sashing”). I find new patterns for connection while merging the embroidered elements of one block into another block through the sashing, in a sort-of snail’s trail of stitches. As I mimic these markings of those makers, I feel a connecting thread. I am walking in their stitch-steps.

Despite the garden-plot references, this work is defying the horizontal, offering a reverse-side textural experience of an unstable grid of frayed edges. The maker-contributors never intended for the ‘wrong side’ to be seen, but when it’s all brought into the light, the translucent stained-glass effect cannot be denied. Suddenly I see connotations of religious symbolism, and I’m wondering about the power of the loose threads and those cryptic-looking stitches when viewed from behind the scenes. Something about sacrifice or at least about having faith that the discomfort in detaching from nostalgia is for good, not evil.

That openness is rich ground, another area to forage.

Connecting embroidered elements feels like walking in the stitch-steps of past makers. (Carlyn Yandle photos)

A backlit view of this work-in-progress adds further layers of pattern, texture and symbolism. (Carlyn Yandle photos)

Circular thinking can be a flow state too

6/2/2024

I opened up my studio yesterday to the public to get some general feedback on a new series of paintings. Because even though I’m compelled to keep working on it and even though I’m enjoying a growing proficiency in this mash-up of stitching and painting I’m having trouble articulating why — or if — they’re not just pretty faces. Mostly I've been answering their questions with questions of my own.

“Why” has always been the trouble. Also aggravating: Why ask why?
This is the reason I’ve named this growing collection of paintings that all basically follow my own set of rules of engagement Circular Thinking. The connotation is negative but hear me out.

Asking ourselves existential questions while we create is infuriating (Shut the hell up, Inner Critic) but it’s also part of a process that can guide us to where we want to land. I would like to be settled with the obvious reason that it’s my route into flow, or actual, real fun. (The “so fun” episode of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast here was recommended to me by my sister.) And they do get me there: into the flow of playing with colours and opacities, of focusing on one stitch at a time, watching how each layer of paint or stitching changes perception.

But I can’t settle with just what’s in it for me. Making is my way of connecting with the world. Much of my work is collaborative, so those involved naturally have a stake in the final projects. Often that’s in the gathering of abject materials, or the actual simple hand-working methods that bring folks together. So it’s easy to see the ‘why’ in these crafted objects and fields; beyond their own resonance they stand as an archive of the social interaction, an artifact of the engagement with materials.

The Circular Thinking series has none of that. Each painting is a singular, intimate effort. It does not reveal any agency embedded in unwanted/useless materials and objects. So in the making, despite the flow part, I feel a whisper of guilt and shame that many women of a certain age might also hear when not doing for others: selfish, self-indulgent, self-absorbed.

There is definitely something in the ‘self’ there that is the driving force in these improvisational, unpredictable and unsettling paintings: self-care. I ache for solid, reliable ground in these perilous times so I start with a grid, like the criss-cross of rebar that sets the concrete footings in every new tower crowding the Vancouver skyline, or a typical nine-patch quilt block. Nine eight-inch-diameter circles in a 24" x 24" "block" anchor to that grid and then I’m off, free of all straight lines, off-setting those circles by half in paint, offsetting again with more layers of colour in paint or thread until I arrive at an attractive/distractive done-ness. It is an improvisational process of revealing and concealing (repeat!) petal-like sections of circles, creating unsettling, kaleidoscopic fields. It is the kind of all-consuming process that reduces hours to minutes, that absorbs all attention, a safe space away from the visual onslaught of social media, yet reflective of our ‘everything is awesome’ screen-field of vision.

It might be easier to eat this elephant one bite at a time by knocking down specific why-questions:

Why paint?
Colour-play. Especially important in this watery corner of the world. It can also act as a dye/stain.

Why canvas?
It’s fabric, with so much possibility for exploring its essential characteristics.

Why the wood stretcher?
Another fibre product that is a natural with fabric. It's basically a quilt frame or embroidery hoop for painters. Building stretchers and stretching the canvas is an investment in the project ahead (a trick I learned from my father @dennisyandle).

Why the stitching?
I like to needle at the hierarchy of painting over craft processes. Each stitch feels like I’m sticking it to convention. Stitching into painting offers the digestible label of “expanded painting practice.”

Why all the quilt references?
The geometry of quilt designs is fascinating, mesmerizing. I have little aptitude but a lot of respect for the beauty of mathematics. The tactility of that geometry connects to present and past makers of objects that exist as art pieces or as items of comfort, utility and gifts, an expression of love. This is a less-digestible "expanded quilting practice": improvisational, mixed-media works with none of that cushy filling.

$Picture$

The geometry of circular quilt designs remains a beautiful, captivating mystery.

Why this scale?
24" x 24” is my standard sample-block size. I dream of an exhibit of all my sample blocks blanketing white-cube gallery walls.

Why two-dimensional?
Closer inspection reveals the third dimension, in the stitching. Also, the aforementioned sample-block dream show is a three-dimensional, immersive space of pattern and colour chaos. (I want to go to there.)

Circular Thinking is both the name of this latest series of grid paintings and shorthand for how I approach every new project: play, think, write, share, think, research, share, write, repeat.

Through this writing part of that feedback loop I can see I just might stop torturing myself with the existential Why and get back into that flow.

@carlynyandle

work-in-progress 'Unbridled' stitches up pain and pleasure

8/31/2022

Exploring tattoo tropes (Carlyn Yandle photo)

Thirty years ago this month I floated down the aisle in a pearly silk dress. Recently I pulled this relic out of deep storage to give it new life.

It is a ballerina-length A-line number, a fitted silhouette of crisp, Japanese Dupioni silk festooned with faux pearls, featuring a winding pattern of woven ivory ribbon stitched around the shoulder and ruche bodice, and bateau neckline edged with mini pearls. A strand of 14 pearl shank buttons nestles into handmade button loops running down the back, disappearing into a bustle of box pleats. A puff of shoulder sleeve slims to a fitted forearm, leading down to three more pearl buttons and ending in a pointed edge at the wrist edged in more pearl trim. The pattern was painstakingly customized by the maid of honour, possibly still this city’s most skilled professional in design development. The sleeve itself is an architectural feat, with three delicate darts at the elbow and invisible underarm gusset for ease of movement when slow-dancing.
The dress was a big effin' deal, is what I'm saying.

Covid-era expression

Following the one night of festivities, the gown and accoutrements — ivory silk pantyhose, pearlescent strappy heels, pearl-bead tiara-hairband thing and matching teardrop earrings — were cocooned in a cotton sheet, placed inside a garment box and embalmed in clear plastic. The box took up precious space, first in an Eastside housing co-op unit, then a Westside condo and finally back to the Eastside where it has been languishing as a past attachment out of place in my much different life. Clearly I needed to address this fetish I had for this dress.

My first job as a full-time newspaper reporter included re-writing submitted wedding announcements — a bit of a comedown after an intensive year of journalism school wrestling with ethical issues and the craft of long-form investigative reporting. Banging out descriptions of sweetheart necklines and fingertip veils was tedious work that made me crabby.

"Nevertheless, she persisted", a Trump-era memento

I resented the notion that this was a ritual of every young woman’s life worthy of space in the local newspaper and the time of a salaried employee. The only vow I was willing to make was to not end up as that girl in the accompanying photo. But question marks hung in the air all through my 20s, not about If but When. Over time my replies of ‘never’ turned into ‘not now’, then ‘who knows’ then ‘soon’ and before the end of my 20s I was a married person with a useless dress in a box.

I’m not nostalgic about the whole patriarchal wedding ritual and its objectifying notions of purity but I did love that dress. Whenever I re-organized my deep storage I would unfurl it from its wrappings, a little ashamed at my attachment to the thing. I needed to poke holes into the whole notion; I needed to break through this pure silk skin.

I texted a friend for support, someone whose own actual skin is needled with ink here and there like it’s no big deal. Do it. Why not just do it?, she texted back. I took a deep breath and plunged the needle into the silk, embedding stitches of ink-black embroidery floss into the ivory cloth. I winced at the first piercing but like tattoos, there was also a flood of pleasure. I began embroidering significant moments of this significant era then hung it on a hanger in my studio until another compulsion came on. This is how this dress and I work together now: it is a work in progress, like that bride who is always still becoming.

I feel zingy about this mark-making with no overall plan that will not be erased, this disruption of expectations for young women — of my time and place, at least. Unbridled is a work in progress, an unkempt keeper, that weaves the pain in with the pleasure.

Reminder of the Women's March on Washington, 2017

The chemotherapy drugs code of a family member close to my heart

Sciatica source, as depicted in tattoo-style lightning bolts

Weather bombs and forests in flames: Tattoo-style flames licking at hem of dress

A bicep full of vaccination pharmaceutical company logos

Moths in flight: symbols of transformation and regeneration

Unwieldy and unfinished — fitting for this pandemic project

6/13/2022

“The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”
-- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

When my nerves are frayed and it feels like the social fabric is unravelling I feel the urge to amend the situation, often by actual mending.

These hands do much less flailing when they're taking up loose ends, making something out of nothing anybody wants or repairing the damaged, discarded and disregarded. But the pandemic has hit hard and for the first time in ages, I am compelled to fall back on something cozy and familiar, for the body — any body — in need. I need to make a big ol' quilt.

Even as the fleeting thought was bonking around my distracted, pandemic-disturbed brain I worried I was regressing. Are a dozen queen-sized quilts — each a barely-passed test of my patience and endurance — not enough for one lifetime? Have I gone circular?

This (and much more) mental pummelling has manifested in the not-yet-completed "Current Conditions" quilt, a weighted blanket in a bluesy palette and undulating pattern of strips of discarded, freely available jeans. Too thick and heavy to wrestle through my vintage Pfaff, I've taken a page from the Japanese traditional "boro" method and hand-stitched long waves of white cotton sashiko thread through the layers of denim, cotton batting and denim whole-cloth backing.

BORROWING FROM BORO: The "Current Conditions" quilt in progress, after hand-stitching through the layers and before the growing roster of pandemic-era hashtags are embroidered.

Soon another layer emerged: hand-embroidered text in the form of some particularly heavy hashtags over the course of this making. Working each of those hashtags into the strips of found textile has become both a meditative activity as well as a meditation on the meaning of those words of these times. This is my physical engagement with the world, one stitch, one block at a time.

Weighing in at more than 10 hot pounds, "Current Conditions" is an unwieldy beast of a blanket but my stitching encounters with the latest hashtags seem far from over. (Should #monkeypox be included? Do I need to reserve a line for #heatdome2022?). Like the global pandemic at this point, it's not clear whether the beast is finally done or will demand more from me.

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